Libya, Syria, and the Future of Intervention

“No country, even the most powerful, can save lives in every conflict, but if it judges itself to be able to and its conscience is sufficiently moved by the killing, it should step in.”

When talking about a country’s “national interests,” foreign policy experts have generally used that term to describe tangible or material concerns: military bases, weapons, alliances, oil supplies, and foreign investments. Interests are often considered distinct from values, the moral or ideological beliefs a country may incorporate into its foreign policy. When considering the use of military force, many experts draw a distinction between “wars of necessity” to protect interests and “wars of choice” to defend or promote values. They generally see the former as conflicts a country has no choice but to prepare for, and while they may see room for moral considerations in foreign policy, they see wars of choice as conflicts a country can fight if it wants to, but not at the expense of interests.

It would be simplistic to argue that policymakers either believe or do not believe in the efficacy of wars of choice. Few elected officials or policy analysts fall squarely into the “realist” camp of narrowly defined interests or the “idealist” camp of centering moral concerns. Indeed, both categories can be broken down further: dovish left-wingers can be idealists and so can hawkish neoconservatives. This suggests that, even if a country wants to focus most of its overseas attention on military and economic concerns, it can still have room for wars of humanitarian intervention.

The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan would seem to strengthen the case for an American foreign policy devoted to traditional security interests. What began as retaliation for a massive terrorist attack inflicted evolved into an occupation with ill-defined goals and a vague sense of moral mission. After devoting lives and resources to a country for 20 years, only to see its efforts undone in a few weeks, it is fair for Americans to ask why their country should ever allow humanitarian sentiments, however justified, to influence where it sends its troops. Why not limit the use of force to interests, not values?

Values are interests. A country’s desire to protect innocents from massacres is a moral interest, just as its desire to protect its treaty allies from invasion, or its energy supplies from disruption, is a strategic interest. While no country can protect all of its interests (strategic and moral) with equal emphasis at all times, if it can use its power for a moral purpose (and not every country has such an opportunity), it ought to do so.